Hello and welcome to this special bonus edition of the Handbrake of Podcasts, brought to you by The Athletic.

This is Amy Lawrence and as we speak, I am just glancing at the Emirates Stadium by night, all lit up.

And there's a little hubbub of crowd going on.

We thought it would be a nice opportunity to bring a little bit of an idea of what it's

like to be back at football for the first time in nine months without crowds.

Everybody has been missing it.

And I've just seen a couple of people going past crossing the road everyone going all right all right whenever they see anyone in a arsenal scarf or hat um there's definitely

an enthusiasm to be back at the ground albeit in this very strange circumstances uh i'm here with my neighbour Jason and his brother, Daniel.

We managed to nab some lucky golden tickets.

So for those who didn't make it this time,

I hope you get lucky for a future game

and get back to enjoy the flavour, sights and smells of live football.

I'm just standing by the Tony Adams statue. You can see a few people milling around outside.

Everyone's got their masks, getting ready for going in. We're about 20 minutes before the game and everyone seems to be quite happy to be back.

You can see up in club level there's people dining up there. Yeah, it feels like a weird version of normal life

but uh better than nothing someone's walking past having a fag

it's uh it's it's football but not as we know it

it's not as we know it

well keep a mad macy

number three here in city.

I found my seat, which is just a couple of long from my actual season ticket seats, so that's really nice.

And in between each seat, they're all spaced out, so you have a seat and then two seats that are covered in plastic with a big cross on that says, please do not sit here.

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